Diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 30, my husband has lived with the disease for the past 40 years. Over that time, we have gone for counseling regarding what he should and should not eat. If we learned anything from the experience, it is that the key to managing the disease is to eat in moderation. In so doing, very few foods are off-limits.

It’s been a few years since I’ve written about tagines, which is the name for those spicy, aromatic stews of North Africa and the cone-shaped, knob-handled cooking vessels in which they are cooked.

The word “tagine” refers to both the cooking vessel (left) and the stews that are cooked in them. Although the highly-seasoned cuisines of North Africa, particularly Morocco, come to mind as classic tagine fare, the Brazilian Fish Tagine, right, splendid with the flavors of South America, proves just how adaptable a tagine can be. Source note: Enameled cast iron Moroccan tagine, with glazed earthenware cone-shaped lid, pictured in “kiwi” green, from Le Creuset, www.lecreuset.com.

The first time I ever tasted Italian Wedding Soup was when I lived in Pittsburgh in the early 1980s. It was served to me at the former Tivoli’s Restaurant on Rodi Road in Penn Hills, and I enjoyed it so much that I ate it at least once a week for the remaining years I resided in Pittsburgh, where my husband worked for WTAE radio.

Photos courtesy of Sue Ade Italian Wedding Soup, bottom left, is comprised of ingredients that “marry” well, such as meat, cheese and endive.

For the holidays over the past few years, my friend Lainey Smith of Bluffton has baked me a cheese pie made from a special passed-down recipe that came via her late grandmother Nana Sadie (Sadie Sharaf) and mother Lillian (Sharaf) Smith, also deceased. As if the pie and the act of baking it weren’t enough, Lainey also shared with me with Sadie’s keeper recipe, which of course makes Lainey more a sister than a friend.

Among our favorite dishes for 2016 are two from July that made use of the bumper crop of basil many of us were able to grow last summer. Even though it’s now winter, fresh basil is offered in larger supermarkets all year long, making it possible to enjoy Baked Summer Grouper with Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce (July 13) and Lemon-Basil Muffin Top Cookies (July 20) anytime we wish.

For enthusiasts of one pot cooking (and who isn’t during the busy holiday season?), Cook’s Country “One-Pan Wonders: Fuss Free Meals for Your Sheet Pan, Dutch Oven, Skillet, Roasting Pan, Casserole and Slow Cooker,” by the editors at America’s Test Kitchen, is a 138 recipe-filled page turner. With four-color photographs throughout, you’ll not only know how to make a dish, but what it should look like after it is cooked.

Cook’s Country “One-Pan Wonders: Fuss Free Meals for Your Sheet Pan, Dutch Oven, Skillet, Roasting Pan, Casserole and Slow Cooker,” by the editors at America’s Test Kitchen, offers a collection of 138 recipes for full meals and side dishes that can pulled together from a single cooking vessel. From the book is Breakfast Pizza, upper left, and Sausage Lasagna, lower left. Photography credits: Keller + Keller and Carl Tremblay; book cover, Carl Tremblay.

Buttery and rich, shortbread and sugar cookies are among the most popular of all the holiday cookies of the season. Straightforward and clean, the taste of butter, sugar and vanilla are at the cookies’ core, and I don’t know a cookie-baking family who does not possess a butter cookie recipe that goes back generations.

Even as we move deeper into the holiday season, after nearly a week of Thanksgiving leftovers, many of us wouldn’t mind turning the calendar back a few months for a chance to revisit the pleasures of eating fresh tomatoes with basil and other herbs.

Using ready-made pie crusts, canned pumpkin and peeled and sliced fresh apples, can make baking for the holidays “as easy as pie.” And, if you want to “play” a little and put a little art into your pies, using these products frees time to trim crusts with pastry leaves using pie crust cutters, or roll out cut-out pastry crusts using lattice pie top cutters.

I’ve made pumpkin pie from scratch — that is, with a filling that’s made with fresh pumpkin. It’s a lot of work and to be honest, the mashed cooked pumpkin is not nearly as smooth as the pumpkin that comes packed in a can.

Photos by Sue Ade/For Bluffton Today With their deep orange flesh and high sugar content, hybrid buckskin pumpkins (bottom) are especially popular for decorative purposes and processing by pumpkin canners. Luscious Pumpkin Marble Cheesecake with Spicy Gingersnap-Pecan Crust and Spiced Pumpkin Flan with Gingered Whipped Cream, top, are both made with canned pumpkin.

Last week’s column on natural sugar alternatives sparked many requests for ideas for gluten-free baking, especially with the holidays approaching. Baking gluten-free is not as challenging as it once was, with many gluten-free pantry items being mainstreamed into the regular baking aisle of the supermarket.

In late August, just seven months after the United States Department of Agriculture released new guidelines aimed at reducing the amount of sugar consumed by most Americans by half, America’s Test Kitchen released a cookbook to help the effort. All the recipes in “Naturally Sweet: Bake All Your Favorites with 30% to 50% Less Sugar” has at least 30 percent less sugar than traditional recipes, with many coming in at 50 percent less.

Why This Recipe Works: "Roasted pears can easily become a raft for a sticky-sweet caramel sauce that overpowers the flavor of the pears. Plus, the pears are often either colorless and mushy or burned and crunchy. We knew we had our work cut out for us if we wanted to achieve our goal: a low-sugar recipe for crisp-tender, beautifully caramelized roasted pears. By starting our fruit over the direct heat of the stovetop, we were able to evaporate some of the juices that would otherwise inhibit proper browning. We finished the pears in the oven so that the gentle, ambient heat would cook the pears while continuing to brown the outsides.

Photos courtesy of Sue Ade Cure the summertime blues with the sweet, cool crunch of fresh blueberries and cherries. For future use, preserve cherries in brandy (directions follow) or freeze blueberries. To freeze blueberries, rinse and pick over to remove remaining stems, then dry on paper towels. When dry, place blueberries in a single layer on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for 45 minutes. (Chilled fruit will freeze faster, and chilling helps to prevent freezer burn by minimizing damage to the fruit's cell structure.) Once blueberries are frozen, pack in freezable containers and seal tightly. They will keep for up to one year.